What is Artistic Research

published in German in:Gegenworte 23, Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften 2010

JULIAN KLEIN

WHAT IS ARTISTIC RESEARCH?

Sorry, the question is wrongly put, good man (1978). We shouldask: When is a research artistic? - But let us start from the end.

Research

According to the UNESCO definition, research is "any creativesystematic activity undertaken in order to increase the stock ofknowledge, including knowledge of man, culture and society, and theuse of this knowledge to devise new applications." (OECD Glossaryof Statistical Terms, 2008).

Research therefore means not-knowing, rather: not-yet-knowing anddesire for knowledge (Rheinberger 1992, Dombois 2006). Researchalso seems to be no unique selling point of scientists, but to includemany activities that have been made by artists, for example. The factthat most of them worked creatively and many systematically, ismostly undisputed. The motivation for knowledge enhancement wason the other hand not comparably obvious overall, even as they sureneed to perform and reflect their work by the use of knowledge theymust have somehow acquired and therefore researched for - and thisnot only recently, but from the very beginning.

For many reasons, as Baecker (2009) describes in short, resentmentsto junctions of research and art begin primarily with theirsubstantification: that artists are "researching" appears easier within ascientistic worldview than that some of the products of their workmust logically belong to "research". Lesage suspects that this rejectionalso is concerned about the restriction of resource access and titled hisarticle (2009) with the question "Who's Afraid of Artistic Research?"

Julian Klein: What is Artistic Research? 2

Before we cite in a potential dispute as a penultimate argumentMcAllister (2004: "I think, artistic research exists"), we can probablysave a couple of points by offering a categorical distinction, forexample a triplet, according to Jones (1980 ), Frayling (1993) andBorgdorff (2009), among others: a distinction in art, which is based on(other) research, then, in art, for which research (or research methods)are used for, and finally in art, whose products are research. Dombois(2009) extends this trichotomy by the chiastic complements:"Research about / for / through Art | Art about / for / throughResearch."

Even natural scientific research alone is very diverse in its objects,methods and products, as McAllister (2004) notes. How much morethis applies to research including the humanities and social sciences,and further industrial, market or opinion research. Not surprisingly,this is also true for artistic research. Among the authors cited here,there is agreement that this diversity has to be preserved againstefforts to canonical restrictions.

Art without research is lacking an essential foundation, as this is thecase for science. As cultural developments, both live on the balancebetween tradition and innovation. Tradition without research would beblind takeover, and innovation without research would be pureintuition. Wherever scientists do not research but teach, judge, advise,treat, apply, or talk more or less telegenically (hence: "PUSH" thebutton), they might still operate science - but if they undertook this allwithout research, they were not quite in their cause. The same can besaid of artists. On the other hand it is clear that not all art quite countsas research, as little as this is the case for science.

The principal diagnosis is, however, "research" in the singular existsnot more than "science" or "art" - they all are collective plurals,assembling very different processes, which often are closer related toothers over category boundaries, like disciplines, than with some othermembers of their own faculty, and then assemble much better undercommon interdisciplinary roofs, such as topics, methods or paradigms.This urge of singularization is probably the strongest root of thesupposed and stubborn opposition between art and science: Baecker


(2009) calls this the "organizing principle of the functionaldifference", which emerged in the 19th century according to Mersch &Ott (2007).

Art and science are not separate domains, but rather two dimensions inthe common cultural space. This means that something can be more orless artistic, while nothing would be already said about the amount ofbeing scientific. This is also true for many other cultural attributes,such as the musical, philosophical, religious or mathematical. Some ofthem are, on the contrary, more dependent on each other than isolated.In this respect, Latour's diagnosis applies, mutatis mutandis, here:"There are no two departments, but only one, their products to bedistinguished later, and after joint examination" (1991, p. 190).However, at least not everything, what is considered being art, hastherefore to be unscientific and not everything that is regarded asscience, inartistic. Dombois proposes for a "Science as Art" fivecriteria (2006). A wealth of examples for which there is here no spaceshows that artistic and scientific content of objects, activities andevents independent of one another can mix in more and differentdosages. Research is not then or only artistic, if carried out by artists(as helpful as their participation may be), but deserves the attributeartistic, where, when and by whom whatsoever been made to aspecific quality: the mode of artistic experience.

Artistic Experience

In the mode of aesthetic sensing perception is present to itself, opaqueand sensible. Artistic experience can be determined similarly as theperception mode of sensible interfering frames (for details see Klein2009). According to this diagnosis, to have an artistic experiencemeans to have a look from outside of a frame and simultaneouslyenter into it. Frames, which cross in this way our perception, arecomparably present and sensible (Fischer-Lichte 2004 calls this a"liminal state"). The artistic experience as well as the aesthetic sensingare modes of our perception and, as such, constantly available, evenoutside of art works and art places.


In the experience the subjective perspective is constitutively included,because experience can not be delegated and only be negotiatedintersubjectively in second order. This is a major reason for theconception of the singular nature of artistic knowledge (Mersch & Ott,2007, Nevanlinna 2004, McAllister 2004, Busch 2007, Bippus 2010.Dombois 2006 points to Barthes' proposal of a "mathesis singularis" in1980). Artistic experience is particularly dependent on and inseparablefrom the underlying undergoings. Artistic experience is an active,constructive and aisthetic process, in which mode and substance arefused inseparably. This differs from other implicit knowledge, whichgenerally can be considered and described separately from itsacquisition (see Dewey 1934, Polanyi 1966, Piccini and Kershaw2003).

Artistic Research

If "art" is but a mode of perception is, also "artistic research" must bethe mode of a process. Therefore, there can be no categoricaldistinction between "scientific" and "artistic" research - because theattributes independently modulate a common carrier, namely, the aimfor knowledge within research. Artistic research can therefore alwaysalso be scientific research (Ladd 1979). For this reason, many artisticresearch projects are genuinely interdisciplinary, specifically:indisciplinary (Rancire in Birrell 2008, Klein & Kolesch 2009).

Against this background the phrase "art as research seems to be notquite accurate, because it is not the art, which evolves into researchsomehow. What exists, however, is research that becomes artistic - soit should be rather named "Research as Art", with the central question:When is Research Art?

In the course of a research, artistic experience can occur at differenttimes, be of different durations and different importance. Thiscomplicates the categorization of the projects, but allows on the otherhand a dynamic taxonomy: At what times, in which phases can beresearch artistic? First, in the methods (such as search, archive,collection, interpretation and explanation, modeling, experimentation,


intervention, petition,), but also in the motivation, inspiration, inreflection, discussion, in the formulation of research questions, inconception and composition, in the implementation, in the publication,in the evaluation, in the manner of discourse - in order only to beginthe list hereby. These phases can be summarized only posthoc andcategorize, for example in the usual triple of object, method andproduct. This sequence is important: for the discussion on artisticresearch is not to fall into a normative restriction in a canonical system(Lesage 2009).

At what level will the reflection of artistic research take place? Ingeneral at the level of artistic experience itself. This does not excludeneither an (subjective or intersubjective) interpretation on adescriptive level, nor a theoretical analysis and modeling on a meta-level. But: "It is a myth that reflection is only possible from theoutside." (Arteaga 2010). Artistic experience is a form of reflection.

Artistic knowledge

Who are we? How do we want to live? What are things meaning?What is real? What are we able to know? When does something exist?What is time? What's a cause? What is intelligence? Where is sense?Could it all be otherwise? - These are examples of common artisticand scientific interest. Their treatment does not always lead to secureand universally valid knowledge (with regard to the history of science:only in very few cases, no?). The arts are granted the authority toformulate and address such basal and yet complex issues in theirspecific ways, which dont have to be less reflected than those ofphilosophy or physics, being capable to gain specific knowledge thatcould not be delivered otherwise.

Whether artistic thirst for knowledge is acceptable as a reason to callan investigation also research, depends obviously on the question,what types of knowledge assemble under the concept of cognition, orwhich types of cognition form the category of knowledge. Even if wecould agree that knowledge is "justified true belief", we would have toargue further, because we would have to agree in the understanding of


when an opinion is a belief and what exactly can be a justification forthis - the concept of truth remaining apart. This path leads,occasionally, to final arguments, which appear in each case acceptableto us or not (see Eisner 2008). For those kind of terms being, in theend, part of a meta-language, such as knowledge, we often experience:the more we try to determine them, the more we are forced tonormative judgments, which are mainly based only on what we wantthem to mean. And then, it is equally operable, if knowledge as a thirdspecies in addition to cognition and skill includes experience, orwhether knowledge and experience stand side by side as forms ofcognition - they should at least be considered equivalent.

Some authors require that artistic knowledge must nevertheless beverbalized and thus be comparable to declarative knowledge (e.g.Jones 1980, 2004 AHRB). Others say it is embodied in the products ofart (e.g. Langer 1957, McAllister 2004, Dombois 2006, Lesage, 2009,Bippus, 2010). But ultimately it has to be acquired through sensoryand emotional perception, precisely through artistic experience, fromwhich it can not be separated. Whether silent or verbal, declarative orprocedural, implicit or explicit - in any case, artistic knowledge issensual and physical, "embodied knowledge". The knowledge thatartistic research strives for, is a felt knowledge.


Literature within the debate on Artistic Research

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Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB): Research in the creative and performingarts, in: Journal of Visual Art Practice 3/1 (2004), S. 75-78

D. Baecker: Kunstformate (Kulturrecherche), in: Rey/Schbi 2009, S. 79-97A. W. Balkema und H. Slager (Hg.): Artistic Research. Lier en Boog, Series of Philosophy of

Art and Art Theory 18. Amsterdam 2004E. Barrett und B. Bolt: Practice as Research. Approaches to Creative Arts Enquiry. London

2009R. Barthes: Die helle Kammer [La chambre claire. Paris 1980]. Frankfurt am Main 1989E. Bippus (Hg.): Kunst des Forschens. Praxis eines sthetischen Denkens. Zrich 2009E. Bippus: Die epistemische Praxis knstlerischer Forschung, in: Gegenworte 23 (2010)R. Birell: Jacques Rancire and The (Re)Distribution of the Sensible: Five Lessons in

Artistic Research, in: Art & Research 2/1 (2008), S. 1-11H. Borgdorff: The debate on research in the arts, in: Dutch Journal of Music Theory 12/1

(2007) S. 1-17; [deutsch:] Die Debatte ber Forschung in der Kunst, in: Rey/Schbi2009, S. 23-51

K. Busch: Artistic Research and the Poetics of Knowledge, in: Lesage/Busch 2007, S. 41C. Caduff, F. Siegenthaler, T. Wlchli (Hg.): Art and artistic research / Kunst und

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